Archive of Our Own

“So… how does this work, usually?” Rei asks as he switches a basket brimming with a bunch of berries, Jubilife muffins, and a big blanket from one hand to the other. “You just… let it out to run around, like a Ponyta?”

“That’s one way to say it, sure,” Akari answers, pushing loose hair back behind her ears. If the breeze is already this gusty on the path to Prelude, it’ll only grow stronger when they reach the beach, so she goes into her satchel for a hair ribbon in defense. Her hand bumps a lone ‘Ball inside. Dialga, Ruler of Time, rolling around in her satchel. As it does, these days. “Though it doesn’t do much running. It likes… ambling around, looking at things. Observing, I guess. Like, last week, when we were surveying in the Fieldlands, it watched this one Wurmple crawl around in a wildflower patch for at least an hour, all the way ‘til it crawled up into the leaves of a tree. Then, there was this Starly building a nest—you know, flitting around, grabbing twigs and things, bringing them back up to its project, and the whole time, Dialga just… watched. It’s like it has endless patience. Which, makes sense, I suppose. Endless time, endless patience…”

“Huh. Guess having all the time in the universe would make you a mighty keen observer.” Rei switches the basket to his other hand again. (Muffins will meet the ground, if he’s not careful.) “Suppose that’s a point in favor of your sappy hypothesis, huh?”

“Do we have to call it that?” Akari bumps him with her elbow, careful to keep the muffins from spilling. “It makes it sound so—unserious!”

“It’s plenty serious!” Rei assures, only semi-assuringly. “I mean, if you ask me, the fact that Dialga won’t return to its own dimension is concerning in itself, but I'm not saying you're wrong. Just that your hypothesis is objectively sappy, but something can be sappy and serious at once. It’s not water and oil, here.”

“It’s not concerning.” Akari counts her defenses off on her fingers, again. “Dialga’s not in any sort of distress, it isn’t acting strangely, the sky’s been perfectly stable—” With a wave of her hand, she gestures to the sky above. Riftless. Mid-day blue. Her hypothesis is simple, but perfectly valid: Dialga has not returned to its dimension yet because it likes it, here, in Hisui. Sappy, sure, but she’s got evidence on her side. She can see it in the way it postures itself when it roams, more and more relaxed each time. In its fascination with every creature, every crack and crevice in Hisui.

But it’s tough to roam with it, when they’re not on surveys. The villagers aren’t too keen on seeing a deity down the street, and the Pastures, with Marie’s utmost and sincerest apologies, simply cannot house it. It makes the other Pokémon antsy, which—well. Fair enough. Even Akari’s own Pokémon, who helped her quell the Blessed Nobles, who have seen the sky itself bleed, are a bit unnerved by it. A deity’s a deity, even if it’s a sweetheart beneath the steel.

So, Akari does what she can, and makes time, for its maker and keeper. It's easy on surveys, with so much wilderness, no one around to worry. They keep away from areas with too many Pokémon, and, well. Even Alphas do not bother the Ruler of Time. In the village, it’s harder, but Practice Field is a nice, wide place, when Taggart and his new Aipom partner aren’t around. The hills that surround the village, if Akari feels like a bit of a climb. Prelude, though, is somehow a first. She and Rei had already planned the picnic for today; what’s the harm in a guest?

Rei had agreed to it, at the time, but even an agreeable Rei is a stubborn one.

“Alright, alright!” He switches the basket to his other hand, again. Akari is two seconds from taking it, herself. “I’m just having trouble wrapping my head around this whole thing, is all. A picnic with the Ruler of Time is bizarre, no matter how you spin it.”

“That depends on how you think about it.” Ah, here, Practice Field—no Taggart or Aipom, today, only a flock of Starly flitting around a tree, searching for seeds in the grass. “Remember that time a few weeks ago, when the Captain was extra stressed out, so we brought her to Prelude to help her relax?”

Rei’s brow hitches. “Are you comparing the Captain to a deity that can warp time around us like wet paper?”

“Not on purpose,” Akari assures, “but I think she’d take it as a compliment, don’t you?”

He considers, shrugs, sighs. “I s’pose so. And they’ve both got plenty of sharp edges, besides.”

“See? It’s just like we’re bringing the Captain to the beach.”

“Sure, just like it. I guess the Captain’s time-warping powers’ll come in any day now."

“You know, Dialga doesn’t just do that for fun.” She pokes him in the arm, a punctuation. What would she do, without his arm here to bother? “Just like the Captain doesn’t come to the beach for fun, as we learned.”

“As we learned.” Rei nods. “Still, you can say it any way you like. A picnic with the Ruler of Time is about as bizarre as it gets."

“Well, give it a week,” Akari says, looping her arm through his, “I’m sure we’ll find a way to top this.”

Rei sighs, again—trying to rival the breeze, it seems—but he’s smiling, all the same. “With you around? I don’t doubt that for a moment.”

Akari returns his smile, and a comfortable silence is accompanied by the breeze through the path’s sparse trees. Starly song carries through the air, and today, her steps feel feather-light. Such an untainted sense of contentment is rare; her responsibilities did not leave with the rift. Each survey brings new data for the Pokédex, and more data means more office days, long hours spent compiling and copying and cleaning-up field notes until the late afternoon sun begins to move, bit by bit, up the wall. But days off from surveys or office work mean a pause on the Pokédex, brief breaths before the completion of her quest brings her back to the mountain. On days like this, time stops, for a bit.

For Akari, the path to Prelude is a time capsule, sown with beginning. This is where she was given her first task in this land, after all, the seed that would bloom into a whole story. There, the little pond where she caught the rowdy Oshawott that now swims and splashes its days away in the tank in the professor’s office; and there, beside it, between two tall cedars, the run-away Rowlet that now perches in the office, and pecks at Rei’s head when he’s not paying attention. And there—the rocks that Cyndaquil had darted behind. Cyndaquil, the only one that had given her any trouble, bursting from and breaking its first ‘Ball. Of course, this is the one that had won her heart. There was no question. The difficult one. Cyndaquil, her first friend in Hisui.

Funny, how things can feel like forever ago, when only months’ worth of time separates now from then. Then again, those months managed to pack a near lifetime’s worth of things, so compact in their container that Bagin would shed a tear. Cyndaquil, who once startled at its own sneezes, has since grown into a Typhlosion, fierce and formidable and filled with more courage than Mount Coronet is tall. Akari is now nearly an Eighth-Rank Survey Corps member, when she hadn’t even had a uniform, then. And today, she is here, again, with Rei, her friend—the boy who had balked at all of her in the beginning—and Dialga, a deity, who holds every beginning and end in its chest. The three of them, on their way to the place where she became and began.

When they reach the point where the path opens up to Prelude, they shuck their sandals, tossing them into the grass beside. At least the beach itself is empty, as usual for this time of the day and season, save for when there’s a ship carrying new villagers in. Good, she thinks. Dialga can wander in peace. Akari prefers Prelude when it’s empty, anyway, even if the evenings when the village kids visit are a joy. But when it’s just her and Rei, they can leave all sense of responsibility back in the grass with their sandals, for a bit, and here, with the vast sea spread before them and all of Hisui behind, is a sort of solace.

(How strange, that the sand the sky spat her upon has become solace. That the place where she was given purpose now means peace. How unfair that the same is becoming more and more true of all of Hisui.)

Ah—no. Leave those thoughts with the sandals. She focuses on the feeling of that first step into soft sand, and she kicks some of it up, just a little, before they make their way down to their usual spot, near the center of the beach. Rei sets the basket down, dropping it into the soft sand an unceremonious inch or so, and starts unfurling the big blanket. Akari does her part by finding stones to anchor the corners against the breeze, which has, indeed, worsened. Her hair will be all fly-aways, by the end of the day. No use fighting fate.

“So, are we,” Rei pipes up, pausing part-way, “letting Dialga out now?” There’s the slightest strain in his voice; whether because the breeze wants to make the blanket into a sail, or because he cannot say the words letting Dialga out any other way, Akari isn’t sure.

“We can eat for a bit first, if you want,” she says, then moves to help Rei before he flies away. She takes a corner, anchors it to the sand with a stone.

“I’d prefer that, if it’s all the same,” says Rei, regaining control over the blanket, with a little help. “Make sure I get some muffins before Dialga gets to ‘em. Remember how it gobbled up those berries when we were studying its dietary habits? Ravenous, for a thing that doesn’t need to eat.”

“Wouldn’t that be a story, though?” She anchors the opposite corner with another stone. Done. A little rumpled, but good enough. “You could lament the time Dialga, Ruler of Time, ate all your muffins…”

“Oh, boy. Yet another thing I’ll have to figure out how to phrase to my parents.”

A laugh bubbles up from Akari’s chest, and she plops down beside him on the blanket. They spend some time eating, plucking stems from berries and sweeping crumbs from their lap, while picking out the shapes of the clouds; one of them’s a Shuckle, Rei says, and he tells her, again, about the Shuckle that lived along the rocky cliffs of Cianwood City; another, Akari asserts, looks like Basculegion, the "tail" of the cloud curling and fading into little wisps. There’s a smear of cloud that is indisputably a Spheal, even if a bit misshapen, slowly tumbling the length of the sky instead of the sea. As time passes, wispy white Pokémon swim across the sea of sky, changing shape, imperceptibly, with each second.

Full of berries and pastries, Akari wipes the crumbs from her mouth and stretches, calm filling every limb in her body. Beside her, Rei is leaned back against his forearms, chin tilted towards the sky, eyes shut, content. Contentedness is more and more common with them, these days, with the rift gone. (Even if the completion of the Pokédex looms to take the rift’s place, a little.)

(Wait—no. Stop. Not today.)

She shakes the thought, ever-lingering, and returns to now. “Alright.” No one's shown up aside from them, but she looks around, just in case, and seeing the coast clear—literally, the coast—she gives Rei a nudge. “You ready?”

Rei opens an eye, closes it again. “Let’s do it.” The words come on an exhale.

Akari reaches into her satchel for the Origin Ball, and Rei sits forward when she does, like he’s steeling himself. She wishes he wouldn’t. She wishes he would feel at ease around Dialga, as she does. Even during their surveys of Dialga and Palkia, neither betrayed any reason to be feared, though she knows well, too well, that trust can be difficult to foster, to forge. Hopefully today can ease things, even if a little. If Dialga is to stay, well. The world will need to learn how to fit it, as it did her.

The Origin Ball glints in the sun like the eyes of an untamed Alpha. Fittingly stately, if a little too intimidating. Crafted from fragments of the Red Chain, meant to bind the broken world together. Now, it holds a friend.

“M-may I?”

Until he spoke, Akari did not notice Rei’s outstretched hand; hesitant, fingers half-curled in uncertainty, but there, nonetheless. A small gasp escapes from her, and her heart lifts even more. Not once during their studies of Dialga and Palkia had Rei held one of their occupied Poké Balls, and he’s always been careful to keep a comfortable distance from the deities, fingers only barely brushing their skin to test their temperatures, and take notes on texture. Progress.

“Of course,” Akari says, holding the Ball out for him. “I wouldn’t deny the crafter his masterpiece.”

Rei chuckles—Mareepishly, as he likes to say. “Well…” He takes the Origin Ball in his hands, so gingerly, as though it’s an egg made of sand. His eyes are wide as he beholds it, like he’s seeing its facets for the first time, like they weren’t so carefully carved by those two hands. Then again, this time, it’s got a deity inside.

He turns the 'Ball around in his hands, slowly, caressing its flat facets with his thumb, and gives a thoughtful hum. “All of time in here, huh? Or, rather, the being who oversees it… Same thing, I suppose.”

“You don’t have to be so careful with it,” Akari says, leaning forward with her elbows on her knees. “Pokémon like it when they can feel that warmth from your hands while they’re in their 'Balls, remember?”

“I suppose…” His mouth quirks to the side in thought, then opens again to speak, when— “Gah!” The Origin Ball nearly flies out of Rei’s hands and into the sand when he jumps like a Glameow doused with Water Gun. “Take it, take it, take it—” And he hurriedly shoves it back to Akari, who quickly understands. It’s moving, a gentle, rhythmic rocking in her hands.

She bites back her laughter, stroking the Origin Ball with her forefinger. “It’s okay, it’s okay! It probably just feels its ‘Ball being handled, and wants to come out. So impatient,” she chides it, affectionately.

Rei lifts his hat and runs his hand through his hair, his habit when he’s flustered, and huffs. “That’s ironic. The Ruler of Time, impatient… Why not just fast-forward to the moment we let it out, instead of scaring the living daylights out of me?”

“Because Pokémon can’t use moves inside their Poké Balls, remember, Mr. Survey Corps?”

Rei scrunches his nose at her, and she scrunches hers back, two children bickering on a beach. The Origin Ball nearly jumps out of her hands. “Alright, alright! I’m letting it out now. You sure you’re okay with this?”

“Positive,” Rei says, brows pinched with a determination becoming more and more familiar, these days.

“Okay.” Akari stands, stretches her legs. Rei stands, too, hanging back, just a bit. Akari unlatches the ‘Ball, and with a bright burst of light, the Ruler of Time manifests before them, all sharp points and sleek edges against the horizon, the glint of sun against steel rivaling the sparkle of the sea. The shadow that Dialga casts across the sand is vast, like a great sundial, and out of the corner of her eye Akari sees Rei flinch, just a little. Wordlessly, she slips her hand in the crook of his arm, squeezes reassuringly. “You okay?”

He nods, eyes fixed on the deity before them. When he speaks, it’s a whisper. “Did it get bigger?”

Another squeeze. He’ll be alright. “Dialga!” Akari calls above the woosh of the waves, and Dialga turns its head from the sea to see them, its red gaze cold as the steel of its skin. But that’s just the way its eyes are, Akari knows, a permanent Mean Look carved into the facets of its face. For all its sharp points and stiff poise, though, Dialga has its own ways of expressing itself.

In a flash, it flings its head back, loosing an ethereal, steely peal, and Rei grips Akari’s arm as he stumbles back some steps and brings her with him. Good timing, too, as Dialga rears up on its hind legs, and its front two hooves (as the Survey Corps have decided to call them) crash back down to the sand with a tremor that would have knocked Akari off her feet if not for Rei right there.

“By Ho-oh’s beak.” Rei’s hand flies to his heart, a mannerism surely passed from the professor. “I take it—it’s happy to see us?”

“It is!” Akari gives his arm one last squeeze before letting go and running to Dialga, who is now bobbing its head up and down like a joyful Chatot. It stills when she nears, knowing its own size and strength well, and Akari places her forehead against the great diamond set in its chest. If it had a real, tangible heart, that is where it would be.

She steps back, cranes her neck (a little uncomfortably) to see the bottom of Dialga’s face. (Maybe it is getting bigger.) “Dialga, you remember Rei, don’t you? The one who made your 'Ball?”

Dialga turns its head to look at Rei, who freezes on the spot, and blinks. Once, twice. Then, it slowly lowers its long neck, looks him right in the face. Rei has to lean back a bit to keep their faces from touching.

“Ah!” The single sound cracks in his throat like a twig. He clears it, gathers himself, and seems unsure of what to do with his hands before clasping them behind his back. “Heh, I guess concept of space is more the other one’s deal, huh?”

It is getting harder and harder for Akari to hold back her laughter, but before she can intervene, Dialga loses interest in Rei and frees him from its stare. It lifts its head and finds fascination with the sea, instead, gaze fixed towards the endless horizon.

With that, Rei takes a step back, then another, until he’s back to the blanket and the basket. “Don’t go asking deities if they remember me again,” he says, bluntness of word lifted by lightheartedness.

“Not even if they remember you fondly?” Akari gives Dialga’s diamond a stroke with her thumb before parting and returning to the blanket with Rei. Let it do as it likes, with no little human to watch for, to make sure it does not topple or squash with its great hooves. Let it wander as it will, with no worries.

Akari drops back down beside Rei and watches Dialga go about its time. The sky and sea seem smaller with it pressed against them. Akari imagines its head and horns piercing the clouds like sticks skewering dango; then, the vision changes, horns becoming paintbrushes, trailing clouds around the sky, changing their shapes. Dialga does change the clouds, sort of, if clouds shift as time passes…

Time passes, clouds shift, and after some moments of this, Rei breaks the silence. “What a sight.” He speaks softly, with uncharacteristic reverence, despite his fluster only moments ago. “Wish I had brought my sketchbook, or the professor’s camera, even.”

“Next time, then.”

A chuckle. “Dear Ma and Pa, I picnicked with the Ruler of Time today...”

Akari laughs, bumps him with her shoulder. Ahead, Dialga has taken to walking the length of the beach, right where the sea meets sand. It does so four times, back and forth, back and forth, its hooves thump, thump, thumping the whole way and kicking up bits of wet sand, until it stops where it started and stares out at the sea.

Rei is right—it is an incredible sight. Sure, it’s less strange to Akari, who has been keeping it company for the last months. But the primordial keeper of time against the horizon, watching the boundless sea… Questions well up within her: What’s on its mind? Does it think the sea is beautiful, or does it think it simply is? Is everything it experiences here in Hisui—the beach, the trees, the flowers, the brush of breeze—new and novel to it? Has it stomped through sand or stepped into the sea, long before now? If so, was it so long ago that those stale memories are being dusted off, pulled from their ancient shelves and made new again?

It is strange, to imagine having something in common with Dialga. Akari’s own stale memories may not be ancient—as far as she feels, at least—but as time passes, here, they are being drawn from her, drop by drop. Fields of yellow wildflowers; the way Cheri, her feisty Floaztel, thumps his foot impatiently, to tell his Trainer she’s going too slow. The shape of Rei’s face, the furrow of his brow, the cut of his jawline. They are his, and his alone, now, but for those first weeks, they belonged to a ghost. There’s a place in the Fieldlands, near Sandgem Flats, that unwove her heart the first time she visited. Stands of cedars, sand worth more than gems, a lake that she thinks she loved, once. The space is vivid, saturated with before here.

(Is there enough time in all of eternity to take away the ache?)

No, no. Not now. Look here, today, not behind, not ahead. Look, here—Dialga, who holds and shapes all of time, has mastered this. It entertains itself, now, by digging holes with its hooves in the damp sand. Footprints, which did not exist moments ago, and will not exist with the wash of the next tide. The epitome of now. But Akari’s mind moves with the current of too many thoughts, anyway, always swept to some other time.

“I wonder what time feels like to the deity who made it,” she says, softly. “Like, what does now feel like to it? What are seconds when all of them, ever, belong to you?”

“You like asking questions that science can’t answer,” Rei says, unhelpfully.

“Because you can think about them forever,” Akari says, “and still never find the answer. Or, you collect a bunch along the way, and all of them can be wrong and right at once.”

Rei hums, leans back on his palms, and quirks his mouth from one side to the other. “I suppose… A second is nothing to it, right? I mean, when you’ve got an eternity of seconds at your disposal, one second is like…” He scoops a hand into the sand, lets the grains slip through his fingers. “A single grain of sand on an endless beach. Right?"

Akari lets this stew in her mind for a moment, but it doesn’t sit right with her. He’s got a point, sure, but—no. “I dunno. That’s like…” She shuffles around for the words, trying to craft the perfect—ah! “Saying a Poké Ball means nothing to a craftsman who’s made hundreds. A second isn’t nothing, I don’t think. Seconds make minutes, which make hours, which make days… And millions and millions of grains of sand make the beach.” She traces her finger through the soft sand, a mark that the wind and waves will wash away, come morning. “You need seconds for all the other things to exist. So seconds can’t be nothing. They’re the most important. The foundation.”

Ahead, Dialga hooves at the foamy edge of a lapping wave. One movement, one moment in its ceaseless life.

Rei’s squinting at the sea, chin propped on his fist, face all written with thought. “I do appreciate the crafting analogy, but we’re not talking in quantities of hundreds; we’re talking infinite.” He gestures widely with his hands. Infinite. “Metaphorically, let’s say Dialga rules an endless sea of seconds. Liquid conforms to the container it’s placed in; in reality, you can place a volume of liquid into containers of any shape, and you’ve still got the same amount of liquid, right? But if you’ve got endless liquid—all seconds—that can conform to any shape you like, in any amount you like… then measurements mean nothing. Therefore, do seconds mean anything to it?”

“See what I mean? We can debate this forever, and never find the answer. If there even is one.”

Rei leans back on his palms, heavily, as though worn by the trail of thought they've just traversed. “Taking forever to understand the minutia of forever…" With a groan that far exceeds his years, he reaches across himself to the basket and helps himself to another muffin.

Akari’s heart suddenly leaps, and she claps her hands together. “Oh! Dialga! Come here, I’ve got something for you!”

Dialga, who is watching the lapping sea fill and retreat, fill and retreat, from one of the holes it dug in the wet sand, lifts its head curiously, then ambles over, sandy hooves and all. Akari grabs a muffin and stands, to help meet its height.

“I’m gonna assume you’ve never had one of these before, though I suppose I can't say for sure,” she says, lifting the muffin in the air and waving it, a little. Dialga’s gaze follows it. “It’s called a Jubilife muffin! One of the villagers taught Rei and I how to make them. They’re usually made with Hopo berries, but I switched them out for Oran for you, since you seem to like those best. If you want to try any, I mean.”

Oh, Dialga does, and is quick to make this clear: it dips its neck faster than Akari knew was possible, the fall of a great steel timber that she feels a breeze from. It makes her jump back instinctively, despite Dialga’s perpetual grace, the careful calculation of each of its movements.

She holds the muffin just below its mouth, the same way Marie taught her to feed the Ponyta and Rapidash at the Pastures: place the food on her palm, and curl her fingers back, a bit, as much as is comfortable, to keep them from the stray nibble of teeth. Of course, Dialga does not have teeth, but the snap! of its steel mouth seems just as frightening, especially considering the speed at which it nabs the muffin from Akari’s hand. Its snout (?) brushes against her palm, soft and swift as the breeze, and the muffin is gobbled up just as quickly. A few crumbs rain down on Akari’s head, and she laughs.

“Messy eater,” she chides, affectionately.

“Wasted no time, at that,” Rei speaks over the breeze from the blanket. “Hah, get it? Wasted no time…”

Akari will not dignify this with a laugh, but she can’t stop her smile from bubbling up, despite her best efforts. She looks up at Dialga, who is watching her intently in return. “What do you think? He’s gotta pay a fine for that one, right?”

Dialga does not answer.

“I think that’ll be one muffin from you, Rei.” Akari points at him; Rei points at himself.

“Me?”

“Mm-hmm,” she answers. “That’s the fee for puns. One muffin to the Ruler of Time.”

Skepticism etches his face. “Sounds made-up, to me. Considering this is probably the first time in the history of the universe Dialga’s ever eaten a muffin.”

“You can’t possibly know that,” she says. “C’mon, it’s just like feeding a Rapidash. Dialga's calm, and careful, and won't snatch up any of your fingers. And I'll be right here beside you.”

It takes him a moment of hesitation, of brow-furrowing and mouth-quirking-to-the-side, before he sets his own muffin aside and grabs a fresh one from the basket. He stands, approaches Dialga with a heavy dose of caution, jumps when the neck comes down and the red eyes bore expectant holes into him. Akari cups his elbow with her hand before curling her fingers fully around his forearm, and he relaxes, a bit, as he reaches his hand out, slowly, so slowly, and—snap! The muffin’s gone in a split second, and a small crumb-shower follows suit, right on Rei’s hat.

He retracts his hand as quickly as he can, but the hint of pride on his face is priceless. It’s the same face he had the first time he fed a berry to a Budew—poisonous things, he had called them, and refused to get too near, even though Akari knew they were kind, she could feel it, see it in the way they frolicked so peacefully around the Golden Lowlands. It had taken more coaxing to get Rei to feed a Budew back then than it did for him to feed Dialga, just now. If only he knew, then, what strides he would take.

She nudges against him, gently. “Not so bad, huh?”

Rei exhales all the air in his lungs, like he’d been holding it. “Is my fine paid, then?”

Akari looks to Dialga, who has turned its attention to a flock of Starly flying across the sky. Such a flighty thing, the primordial Ruler of Time. “It would seem so.” They return to the blanket and the basket, and Dialga begins to roam again, aimless.

It's quiet, for a bit. Rei grabs another muffin, but just before he takes a bite: “Y’know…” The words drop from his mouth, slowly, as though he's debating them. “Dialga’s not in its ‘Ball anymore.”

“Very observant.”

“I’m just saying… Hypothetically.” Oh no. His favorite word. Nothing good ever comes from it. “If we were to end up in a time loop, would we even know? I mean, how do you figure that sort of thing?”

“Rei, Dialga does not have us in a time loop—”

“I'm not saying it does. I just mean to say,” he lowers his voice, leans in a little, “it seems an awful efficient way to get your hands on an unlimited serving of muffins. And we’d be none the wiser.”

Rei wears his emotions so plainly on his face, through the slumps of his shoulders, the flight of his hands—but sometimes, it’s impossible to tell whether he’s joking. For every bit as blunt as he is, his subtlety can be masterful.

“So, what I’m saying is—” Rei stops to stuff a bite of muffin into his mouth, then speaks with his cheek full as a foraging Pachirisu’s— “if we get stuck in a time-loop, it’s your fault.”

“My fault!” Akari would pitch her own muffin at him, if that wouldn’t be a waste of perfectly good food. “It’d be more yours for giving it the idea, wouldn’t it?”

“As if the Ruler of Time needs any ideas on how to, you know, wield time.” As he goes in for another bite, Dialga, who is startlingly silent in sand, makes its presence known. It cranes its great neck down, leans in, and nudges Rei's hat, near knocking it off. Rei freezes on the spot, muffin stuck halfway to his mouth. “Akari…”

Akari holds her laugh in with her hand, reaches for the basket, and then. A thought. A thrill runs through her limbs. "Rei." She leans in with the speed of Dialga when offered a muffin, slamming her hands down on the blanket with such ferocity that he jumps as though she were one of Dialga's hooves. "If Dialga were to put us into a time loop to get infinite muffins... You might call that... an endless sea of seconds, wouldn't you? Endless second helpings..."

Bewilderment and disappointment mingle on Rei's face, at her intensity, at her wordplay, until his mouth twists against a suppressed smile, which fights and wins and takes flight as full-fledged laughter, and he buries his face in his hands. For shame! At her, and his laughter! "No, I would not call it that," he says, and then snorts like a Sproink, which stokes Akari's laughter even more, until they are a giggling mess on the blanket.

Dialga watches, eternally patient.

Their mirth tapers, laughter softening into the air like wisps of clouds, and when Akari opens her eyes again, it’s to great red ones. Ah. So she has a fine, too, then? Fine. She pays, dusts a fresh snow of crumbs from her hair, full of fly-aways. After enjoying its payment, Dialga hooves at the soft sand, and wanders away, continuing its roam. Content.

“Y’know,” Rei says, flat on his back from the laugh attack, voice light from the last leftovers of laughter, “maybe there’s some merit to your sappy hypothesis.”

A quip about the rarity of a Rei approval tugs at Akari, vaguely, noncommittally, but her lips merely smile instead of speak. She drapes her arms over her knees, pressed to her chest, and rests her head against them. There must be a reason Dialga hasn’t returned to its dimension, but maybe—perhaps—it is as simple as: because it can. Because staying, for the one who holds all of time, is never finality; because the simultaneous threat and promise of leaving is not something that looms, linear as the horizon, but instead simply floats, without direction, amorphous, as if bobbing somewhere, sometime, in the vastness of the sea.

She wonders: what today will mean to Dialga, centuries from now? Will it remember this, and the two of them? Will somebody, someday, give it a treat, and these days will come rushing back like waves reaching out for the beach? She hopes so. She hopes that every second lives in it. Akari cannot have every second; so many of hers will slip like sand through fingers, sure as unruly hair becomes fly-aways. So many have already been lost to the sea of time itself, drifting, existent but unreachable, in a darkness more and more illuminated by whatever sunlight chooses to pierce it.

She takes a good, long breath, lets it loose against the breeze.

(No. Not today. There is time. She’ll use this second as an anchor against the endless sea of them: belly full of muffins, blue sky, friend by her side, and Dialga, who holds every beginning and end in its chest, roaming the beach where she became and began…)